How is job creation faring in Mississippi these days? If you live in Hattiesburg, Water Valley or Canton, you'd probably say, "Just fine, thanks." If you follow National Public Radio, you might say, "Not so fast."

Such is the contrast, the often conflicting sets of data, that is inherent in judging a city's economic health, much less that of an entire state.

Monday must have been considered a banner day for the Mississippi Development Authority and other state- and local-level economic development officials tasked with spurring job growth. A collective 458 jobs and $91 million in new, private investment were announced that day.

Green Bay Converting will begin operations in Hattiesburg, employing 300 people to convert paper into a range of sanitary bath tissue and towel products. In Water Valley, Automotive powertrain supplier BorgWarner is expanding its facility in a move expected to add 158 jobs to its payroll. Meanwhile, Nissan Canton is in the process of hiring several hundred workers to build the Murano crossover starting this fall.

Such robust job growth must mean Mississippi is getting further removed from the dark economic doldrums of 2008, right? A report from NPR suggests the state may not be as far removed from the worst of the recession as it may seem.

The network published a study of how each U.S. state and the District of Columbia have fared in terms of job growth or shrinkage from January 2008 through this past May. Mississippi was among 32 states that lost jobs during that time frame, according to the study. The Magnolia State saw its job count shrink by 3.4 percent over those six years.

But take solace in the fact this is a seemingly rare occasion where Mississippi did not finish at the bottom of such a study. Five states fared worse, including our neighbor to the east, Alabama, which finished 49th with a 5 percent job loss. The two states at the bottom were Arizona (-5.4 percent) and Nevada (-6.1 percent).

It's not hard to figure out why many states performed as they did. Nevada and Arizona, of course, saw perhaps the most drastic impact on real estate in the entire nation during the recession, and Nevada's still-healthy gaming industry isn't going to overcome those losses, not when most gamblers are losing money or merely breaking even themselves in between shooting selfies in front of Las Vegas' innumerable neon-lit temples of excess.

North Dakota had the most job growth in the NPR study, at more than 15 percent, fueled (sorry for the pun) by explosive growth in oil/gas exploration that has drawn would-be Jed Clampetts and J.R. Ewings from far and wide to an area that most people on the population-dense East and West coasts probably have long viewed as perhaps the ultimate "flyover state."

At 6.8 percent, the District of Columbia fared third best in the country because the federal government doesn't exactly adhere to the "measured growth" principle.

As for Mississippi, where we stand isn't as clear-cut. For every instance of large-scale job creation, there are seemingly incremental instances of job losses. Of course, those "incremental" losses can add up and act to make the kinds of job gains announced Monday look like more of a wash than it seems.

And many times over the past few years, in practically any subject matter I've explored that in any way touches on the recession, I've been told by people that Mississippi entered the recession more gradually than places like Nevada, California or Florida and will fully emerge later than other states. Maybe Mississippi would have fared worse in such a study had its time frame of reference ended in 2010 or 2011 instead of just two months ago.

A lot has changed about the state's jobs climate during the time covered in the NPR study. Northeast Mississippi, for example, has morphed greatly from being a furniture manufacturing hotbed (although that industry remains prominent) to being an equally strong player in the automotive sector.

With such ongoing, fundamental shifts, there are bound to be net job losses or gains, and it takes time for the trend to shift in one direction or another before smoothing itself out. And if you're jobless and living in Hattiesburg, Water Valley or Canton, you might feel like you have more hope of landing a good-paying, professionally rewarding job this week than you did six months ago or even a few weeks ago. And a little bit of hope goes a long way.

Can Mississippi regain all the jobs it lost during the recession? It's not impossible, but it's probably something the state will have to be patient with for at least a couple of more years. Here's hoping NPR or some other organization will revisit the issue in, say, 2017 or 2018. Maybe then Mississippi will be on the right side of the equation.